Paladin Shield/Sword Oath Usage

I'm new to tanking in FF. Without a doubt, it's different than what it is in WoW, which is what I'm used to. It took me awhile to adjust from WoW's "tanks are complete defense" mindset, to changing to FF's "tanks are enmity-holding dps" mindset. Unless I've completely misunderstood what I've been researching with this.

Regardless, I've found myself enjoying paladin over warrior and drk. I've done my research on combos, rotations, how mt/ot works, and so on... But there's one thing I keep getting mixed answers on, that's causing me the most confusion.

My question is when to use shield oath, and when to use sword oath. If I'm tanking a dungeon, do I just permanently keep shield oath up for enmity, or do I use sword oath to get my gauge built up faster? If I'm main tanking a boss, do I always use shield oath... Or do I only use shield oath in times of high damage, sword oath during the rest?

I've been getting mixed answers in my research, and was hoping to finally get an answer.

There is no final answer and this would probably best described in a flow chart.

A. Can you hold threat in sword oath?
B. Can your healer keep you up in sword oath?

If you can answer yes to both A and B then sword oath. If you cannot answer yes to both A and B use shield oath. This is simplified because healer DPS does play a factor and really it will come down to feel once you notice what your healer is capable of. If your healer can keep you up in sword oath but can't DPS but can DPS while you are in Shield Oath the extra DPS may outweigh your DPS gain being in Sword Oath.

for now in the current state tank stances aka shield oath in you case are just emity buffers in practice, you use it to get a strong lead on emity at the begining and then you switch to sword oath the rest of the fight, the damage penalty they have is not worthy the 20% mitigation and you dont really need it to survive.
the exception is on dungeons when you are tanking 2 groups of adds stay on shield all the time, dont take unnecesary risk unleash they are like 2 mobs only and you are sure its worth change to sword with the hp they still have to push a bit more.

Basically what Wintersandman suggests. Use shield oath until you or comfortable/capable of not using it. As you keep playing and get a better understanding of encounters you'll naturally get better at mitigating via cooldown usage and can ease in to more aggressive tanking.

General rule of thumb would be tanking big dungeon pulls in shield, swap to sword for bosses. And in raid situations it's generally better for one of the other tanks to pull/MT while you stay in sword.

Thanks for the answers and clearing it up for me.

It'll take me time to adjust from the tanking I'm used to, but eventually I'll get it done. I just find myself thinking "Take as little damage as possible, you're not a dps" too often. As my friends say, "Just let the healer cover your health for you."

Maybe I just need to tell myself to treat shield oath like a cooldown, using it only when needed.

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Originally Posted by Forben

Thanks for the answers and clearing it up for me.

It'll take me time to adjust from the tanking I'm used to, but eventually I'll get it done. I just find myself thinking "Take as little damage as possible, you're not a dps" too often. As my friends say, "Just let the healer cover your health for you."

Maybe I just need to tell myself to treat shield oath like a cooldown, using it only when needed.

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Hi Forben. I would suggest building agroo In shield oath and after u establish it, I would then change to sword oath and pop my offensive cd to deal some dmg. You can pop some defensive cd while in sword oath to help the healer out. For me staying in shield oath is
1. mandatory when your healer struggles to heal you.
2. When you have trouble keeping agroo and the rest of the party steals agroo from you.
3. Tank swaps.


Welcome to FF14. I also was a Tank in wow Paladin. Now I'm a Warrior here and I love it.

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

Hi Forben. I would suggest building agroo In shield oath and after u establish it, I would then change to sword oath and pop my offensive cd to deal some dmg. You can pop some defensive cd while in sword oath to help the healer out. For me staying in shield oath is
1. mandatory when your healer struggles to heal you.
2. When you have trouble keeping agroo and the rest of the party steals agroo from you.
3. Tank swaps.

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on tank swaps? thats a thing of the past now we have shirk.

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Originally Posted by shao32

tank swaps? thats a thing of the past now we have shirk.

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No, that's wrong. Shirk is aggro control, tank swap is changing tanks because of a debuff that would deal more damage than a tank could mitigate .

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Originally Posted by Forben

Thanks for the answers and clearing it up for me.

It'll take me time to adjust from the tanking I'm used to, but eventually I'll get it done. I just find myself thinking "Take as little damage as possible, you're not a dps" too often. As my friends say, "Just let the healer cover your health for you."

Maybe I just need to tell myself to treat shield oath like a cooldown, using it only when needed.

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Other way around. When in doubt use Shield Oath when tanking.

Shield Oath reduces the damage you take, while increasing the enmity you generate which makes it easier to hold aggro. It is your tank stance.
Sword Oath increases your DPS - great for solo play, but also for dungeon encounters where you can hold aggro and stay alive even without Shield Oath.

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Originally Posted by Forben

"tanks are enmity-holding dps"

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and

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Originally Posted by Forben

"Just let the healer cover your health for you."

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is a very bad and sadly common misunderstanding of the aggressive tanking meta. Yes, the end goal is to deal as much personal dps as possible, but you should not neglect your defense either, as that results in lower healer dps.

It is indeed usually best to leave your tank stance as soon as you've built enough enmity at the start of the fight, but while in damage stance you should be rotating your defensive cds to cover not only tank busters and cleaves, but also as many autos as possible. Part of learning an encounter as tank is figuring out when to use which cd and how much can you save by utilizing ultimate cds and tank swaps. It might be less involved than in other games, but it's still there.

It's also sometimes good to swap stance when shit hits the fan. Basically push for dps, but don't be stupid about it.

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Originally Posted by Quri

No, that's wrong. Shirk is aggro control, tank swap is changing tanks because of a debuff that would deal more damage than a tank could mitigate .

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what i mean i s no need of use of tank stance thanks of provoke/shirk combo

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Originally Posted by Forben

It took me awhile to adjust from WoW's "tanks are complete defense" mindset, to changing to FF's "tanks are enmity-holding dps" mindset.

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I think some clarification here might help. In ffxiv, defense and enmity are extremely important, but only until you have "enough". After you have "enough", there is usually little benefit to adding more, so you might as well add offense.

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My question is when to use shield oath, and when to use sword oath.

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The generic answer is ensure you hold threat, then use whatever will result in the shortest clear time. There really isnt a nice "you need to do X every time" answer for this because it's based on circumstances that aren't going to remain consistent.

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If I'm tanking a dungeon, do I just permanently keep shield oath up for enmity, or do I use sword oath to get my gauge built up faster?

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The speed of your gauge is a secondary concern. The primary concern is which oath will allow you to clear the content fastest while holding threat. If shield oath will allow you to clear something faster (ex: reducing the total number of pulls for a section), it's worth it.

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If I'm main tanking a boss, do I always use shield oath... Or do I only use shield oath in times of high damage, sword oath during the rest?

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Currently, the high damage sections of a dungeon boss should never be high enough to kill you, so it's usually just a question of whether or not you need the additional emnity from shield oath. It's not uncommon to spend the majority of a boss fight in Sword Oath. During high damage (such as tank busters), you can stay in sword oath, but you should almost always mitigate that damage with something. Shelltron and reprisal are nice for this. Your bigger cooldowns like rampart and sentinel are also very good, but keep in mind that if you arent on the very last boss, you may have a large group of mobs to pull afterwards that you'll want those cooldowns for.

Part of being a good tank in this game isn't just knowing when to swap stances, but also knowing the fight well. If you chill out in dps stance and don't know when tank busters/cleaves/periods of high damage are, then you're not being as good of a tank as you could be. It's *essential* to know when to use defensive cds when you're pushing your dps, as it's very much a team sport. Your hp is both yours and your healer's concern, and you should be working together to manage both it and your own dpses (healers wanna maximize their dps as well).

In a dungeons generally you should just stay in shield oath for trash pulls. On bosses, you can usually just do 1 rage of halone combo in shield oath and then swap to sword for the rest of the boss. This is gonna depend on your own gear and the skill of your dps in comparison to you.

A good rule of thumb is using Shield Oath for trash and Sword Oath for bosses. You can do the following to get a good enmity lead. Usually it's enough to keep aggro for an entire dungeon boss fight.

(Shield Oath is on)
Shield Lob
Rage of Halone combo
Fast Blade + Riot Blade + Sword Oath (+ Fight or Flight) + Goring Blade

beware of casters in dungeons, especially BLMs yesterday i stole aggro from tank in Sword Oath on boss as BLM, even though i used Diversion. Now imagine that in dungeons you get all sorts of people, and some won't even bother to use Diversion
At least as DRK, which i occasionally play, i always start boss encounter in Grit, and after 2-3 enmity combos, empowered with Dark Arts, i switch Grit off and that is enough threat generated for me

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Originally Posted by Quri

No, that's wrong. Shirk is aggro control, tank swap is changing tanks because of a debuff that would deal more damage than a tank could mitigate .

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True, tank swaps still exist. But provoke + shirk makes them trivial to the point of not needing tank stance.

You could consider tank stance like training wheels. There is no shame in using it but the higher you go up in skill level the rarer its use becomes. Generally in hardcore groups there is barely any use of tank stance due to highly optimized play, while in contrast its absolutely common to see tanks in dutyfinder stay in tank stance 100% of the time. Its a question of comfort level.

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Originally Posted by SilentVoice

beware of casters in dungeons, especially BLMs yesterday i stole aggro from tank in Sword Oath on boss as BLM, even though i used Diversion. Now imagine that in dungeons you get all sorts of people, and some won't even bother to use Diversion
At least as DRK, which i occasionally play, i always start boss encounter in Grit, and after 2-3 enmity combos, empowered with Dark Arts, i switch Grit off and that is enough threat generated for me

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Replace Diversion with Lucid

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Originally Posted by RLofOBFL

Replace Diversion with Lucid

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Should have both

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Originally Posted by Jukebox12

Should have both

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I only use Lucid now, to great success. I haven't taken aggro ever if i use Lucid when I'm #2 and almost tied with tank. The BLM opener isn't bursty enough unless you maybe crit every single hit to take aggro, at least in my experience.

But I mean....you're not wrong. I just got super sick of swapping in surecast for Shin and 4S so I tried Lucid only and it works for me so meh.

Lol tanking in FFXIV is a can of worms in any discussion. There's always two philosophies that people hold as tanks:
1. You're an enmity holding DPS
2. Mitigate the damage and let the healer DPS

As someone who has played both styles and been in this game since 2.0, both sides are correct. Most people seem to find option #1 to be the most fun though because the DPS mechanics and rotations are generally more entertaining than the mitigation side. Holding high amounts of mitigation and self healing opens up your healer to dishing out much more potential damage than you could if the healer isn't stupid and knows how to DPS. But unfortunately that's not always the case and more people are familiar with DPS tanking so most healers are on high alert and often spend the time to heal you regardless if you needed or were about to heal yourself. But, like everyone else (including me), you're sure to find your preferred playstyle and hold it as god honest truth whether it really is or not.

But the best OVERALL playstyle for most given situations is running Shield Oath to ramp up aggro and for trash pulls (But you can run Sword Oath if you know what you're doing), and in bosses you only get into Shield Oath when you need aggro (which is usually the start of a fight).

Depends on the content really:

In Savage Raiding, Paladins are in Sword Oath for 99% of the fight. Sometimes you'll open the fight in Shield Oath if you don't have a Ninja to help you manage enmity. Sometimes you'll switch to Shield Oath when a heavy hitting add appears or if one of your healers die. However, MOST of the time you can just activate Rampart for 20 seconds and stay in Sword Oath. "Provoke + Shirk" has made enmity management far easier these days. Also, dealing 3,800 DPS as a Tank in Sword Oath is quite the enmity generator on its own.

In Dungeons it's usually a good idea to stay in Shield Oath on trash mobs. But that's assuming you are pulling 6-12 mobs every single pull, which also involves using almost every cooldown you have (including Shield Bashing when you run out of cooldowns, Convalescence + Requiescat + Clemency spam, and even popping Sprint and running in a tight circle to avoid auto attack damage when things get real desperate.) Bosses you treat the same as Savage Raid bosses. Sword Oath after getting an enmity lead; which is usually a single Rage of Halone combo. (Assuming your gear is top notch and melded.)

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Originally Posted by Wintersandman

...really it will come down to feel once you notice what your healer is capable of.

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This 1000 times. Don't listen to DPS who want you to pull everything if you don't feel comfortable. You're the tank. In the 1.5 years I spent only tanking, I've run into my fair share of DPS who should have queued as tank if they wanted to tank. But they didn't. Now, my motto is (mostly) you pull it, you tank it. Once you get more comfortable with the instance/party, pull more and test yourself and your cool-down management and stance dancing. And thank your healer. :)

Nothing annoys me more than, say, a DPS player waltzing into a dungeon and assuming they know the tank & healers limits better than they do.

I'm a DPS-WHM main who is happy enough with tanks pulling everything. However, just because I'm fine with it doesn't mean I won't tell off a DPS player who starts screaming "PULL MORE". If they do this when I'm tanking (and I've decided not to mass-pull for some reason), I'll inform them that if they want it done a certain way, they can sign up as tank and do it themselves, otherwise I'm going to tank what I *KNOW* I can hold without making Healer DPS too difficult (NOTE: This is a point that relates to Sword/Shield oath later). The first thing a team needs to acquire is trust (especially in randomized Duty Finder/Roulette). If a tank is unsure/wary, then let them pull something more comfortable so they can see how the party ticks and judge for themself. If the tank trusts the Healer, the Healer trusts their aggro-grab and mitigation (and that the DPS won't constantly eat random mechanics), and the DPS trust that they will be saved from aggro/kept alive by the Tank/Healer, everyone wins.

Regarding Sword/Shield Oath, bear in mind that a tank trying to DPS during huge damage intake (be it a huge pull or just something that hits mega hard), this forces the Healer to DPS less to compensate. The optimal setup is a Tank who doesn't need to be constantly healed (when trying to do damage) so that the Healer, too, can contribute without fear. If it boils down to a choice, Healer DPS will typically beat Tank DPS in most cases, at least in terms of trash (eg. WHM Holy Spam), so if they can't do this because you're zerging into a triple-pack hoping to smite evil with your potential 2k ST DPS while the Healer is stuck spewing out CureII trying to keep your silly bum alive, that isn't worth it. Sure, they can QC Holy and maybe force their own opportunities if they're good, but the fear/caution will be a problem.

When I enter a dungeon, regardless of role, I consider the first pack(s) as a party test. From there it is often very easy for each role to tell how things go from then on. If the mass-pull lasted too long (let's say lack of solid AoE damage) and/or the tank is a bit squish, you'll know that a Healer will have to compensate (either with more healing or by adding DPS, usually both). In such a case, you're better off sitting in Shield Oath compared to Sword. Honestly, a lot of it is just common sense, so just make a point of getting to know your team and their limits (through actions, not word-fuelled macros or life-stories).